This invention is a simple earplug dispenser which can receive a container with many earplugs and dispense them one or two at a time as a person turns a handle.
Devices for dispensing one item at a time, such as pills, sometimes use a wheel that is rotated by a person's hand, with the wheel having holes that receive the items and that move the items over an opening in a barrier so the items fall into the person's hand. U.S. Pat. No. 2,649,994 shows a tablet dispenser of this construction. This general approach has been applied to earplug dispensers, as described in applicant's earlier application PCT/US93/09801 (WO 94/09456). While tablets are rigid, earplugs are generally elastomeric, so they tend to "bounce". As a result, an earplug can easily bounce off a person's palm onto the floor, or bounce off a catch pad lying under a dispense location and onto the ground. In factories where large numbers of earplugs are used, the floor is often dirty, as with oil carried to the location by the workers' shoes, so an earplug that drops onto the ground is generally considered dirty and thrown away. A dispenser that minimized the possibility of any dispensed earplug bouncing and falling onto the ground, while enabling earplugs to be readily dispensed in a simple mechanism, would be of value.